Sandro Botticelli, (Italian, 1445–1510), Ideal Portrait of a Lady, (“Simonetta Vespucci”), 1475–80, tempera on poplar panel, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Kat. 106 A.

Audio Description

This painting, entitled Ideal Portrait of a Lady, possibly Simonetta Vespucci, was made between 1475 and 1480 by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, who lived form 1445 to 1510. It is painted in tempera on poplar panel and is in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, catalogue number 106 A.

We are presented with a bust-length profile portrait of a young woman looking to the left. Behind her is a dark wall, with a window through which we see the blue sky that frames the top part of her head. She has pale skin, blue eyes, thin pink lips, and hints of a pink undertone that define her features. Her long blond hair is arranged in an elaborate and fanciful hairstyle. The hair around her face is left loose and four large pearls define the part at the top of her forehead. Three different styles of black ribbons are wound through her hair: a loose bun at the back of her head trails a long section of hair hanging down her back that is wrapped three times with crisscrossing ribbon; a long braid studded with small pearls loops around the bun. She wears a red dress with slit sleeves through which her white undergarment is visible. The center front of the woman’s dress has a black panel decorated with horizontal lines made up of small gold diamonds.

Label Copy

This painting, entitled Ideal Portrait of a Lady, possibly Simonetta Vespucci, was made between 1475 and 1480 by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, who lived form 1445 to 1510. It is painted in tempera on poplar panel and is in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, catalogue number 106 A.

Sandro Botticelli was one of the most highly regarded Florentine painters of his age. A pupil of Filippo Lippi, by the mid-1480s, Botticelli was working for the leading patrons at important sites across Italy. This painting is often associated with Simonetta Vespucci, a fifteenth-century Florentine woman famously praised in art and poetry for her beauty, but it is probably not an objective likeness. Rather, the work belongs to a genre of idealized portraiture made by Florentine artists in the 1460s and 1470s.

Five works by Botticelli and his workshop were among the 202 paintings sent to the U.S., but only two, including the Ideal Portrait, made the complete tour of thirteen cities in 1948–49. In January 1949, the St. Louis PostDispatch published a photo of one of the German art experts who traveled with the exhibition inspecting this painting. Across the country, newspapers featured photographs of the paintings being uncrated and examined, offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of museum practices.

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